Happy New Year!
Financial resolutions can be one of the most popular resolutions people adopt at the start of a new year. As with all resolutions, the thought and intention are well-meaning. The follow-through is the hard part.
If it is not too late, I'd like to suggest a particular habit to adopt.
Keep your army at home.
What I mean is that, as billionaire investor Kevin O'Leary is fond of saying, your army of dollar bills. The money you keep to yourself.
Every nation with it's own military keeps a particular section of it at home. Either as dedicated to defending against attacks on the homeland, or as reserves designated to be called into action during times of crisis. The wisdom of having highly trained, capable, and dedicated personnel available at a moment's notice has been around for centuries. Today, I encourage you to adopt this mentality toward your income.
For an example, we all know an Emergency Fund is crucial to providing financial stability in hard times. Though many of us don't build the Emergency Fund well, if at all. Looking at your budget, if you see each of your dollar bills as a soldier in your money army, then if you put some of those dollars into savings, it's like putting those soldiers on reserve.
Like when a hurricane destroys a town, Army reserves can be called in to rescue people, prevent further damage, or help evacuate. With your own reserve, you can "call up" your reserve dollars to rescue you from emergency expenses like if a tire on your car is punctured suddenly. These reserves can help you evacuate to a new and safer job if you suddenly lose your current one. It can even prevent further damage by providing a cushion as you continue to build strong budgeting and spending habits.
The more you spend your money, the fewer of these soldiers are off fighting for someone else, not you. I encourage you, again, this month to think about keeping more of your army at home. Look at your spending. Really determine if some of the things you think you need are really that necessary.
There's no way to truly describe the security you can feel knowing you have an entire army at your back ready to serve.
I found it easy to build my army simply by using cash every chance I can. I only use $20 bills and at the end of the day ALL change (bills and coins) are sorted and stashed. You'd be surprised how fast it grows.
Good words, thanks Tod.